It is rarely necessary to use other than the cooling and astringent lotions, yet the persistence of irritable sores, ulcers and crusts must be treated as in other chronic skin affections.
MOIST ECZEMA OF THE PASTERNS IN THE OX.
Causes: hot season, foul stables, streptococcus. Symptoms: sudden attack, red, swollen, warm, tender pastern, vesicles, crusts, scabs, lameness, foot rested on toe, cracks, fissures, interdigital foot rot, shedding hoof, scaly chronic form. Treatment: clean stables and yards, cleanse feet, lead lotion or zinc, phenol, iron or copper. Tar water, tar, creolin, creosote, iodol.
This affection is comparable to the simpler forms of grease or digital eczema in horses.
Causes. It occurs especially in the hot midsummer season in cattle kept in filthy stables, where the feet and pasterns are kept filthy and the air charged with irritant ammoniacal fumes. A streptococcus is usually met with and may be found in pure cultures in resulting abscesses.
Symptoms. The attack is sudden, the skin around the pastern becoming red, warm, swollen and tender, with the formation of vesicles, isolated or confluent, which rupture and discharge a serous exudate that dries up into crusts and scabs. Lameness is a marked symptom and in bad cases the swelling and pain are such that the foot may be habitually raised from the ground and rested only on the toe. The swollen skin is thrown into folds which rub on each other, and breaks open into cracks from which exudes a serous fluid that macerates and irritates the skin, the heel pad and the interdigital space, so as to determine interdigital foot rot. This may lead to inflammation inside the hoof with shedding of the horny mass, or it may subside into a chronic form with an abundant squamous product.
Treatment should be mainly prophylactic in the direction of cleanliness and abundant litter in the stables, and the avoidance of pools of liquid manure and of septic mud puddles in the yards and roads.
In the early stages of the affection the pasterns and interdigital spaces should be thoroughly cleansed and covered with a bandage with a weak solution of acetate of lead, or of sulphate of zinc, or carbolic acid, or sulphate of iron or copper. In the more advanced stages tar water or crude tar will serve a good purpose, or watery or alcoholic solutions of creolin, creosote, oil of tar, carbolic acid or iodol. When the horn has been separated from the quick, it is usually best to pare away all such, to bevel the edges so as to make them less rigid and more pliant and to dress with tar water and later to cover with undiluted tar and bandage.
MOIST ECZEMA OF THE TAIL, NECK, CHINE AND DEWLAP OF CATTLE.
Definition. Causes: in work oxen, winter, foul stables; dairy cows on spoiled fodder or maize, wheat, buckwheat, cotton seed, etc. Contagion. Symptoms: skin hot, thick, tender, exuding, matted hair, vesicles, itching, excoriation, ulceration, bleeding, sloughing. Treatment: Soothing. Cleanliness. Pure air. Tepid sponging. Dusting powder. Clip or shave. Calomel with care. Phenol. Creolin. Silver or copper salts. Tannic or boric acid.